I have to admit that I was actually pretty amazed when I realized every item on my list was complete. And while I’m proud of myself for making it happen, I also have recognized the need to scale back for a bit. My recent vacations have reminded me that downtime is good too and I want to bring more of it back into my life on a daily and weekly basis. I’m long overdue for lazy weekday evenings watching TV with Jose, or kid naptimes spent reading a good book instead of heading to the sewing machine. Basically, I am once again remembering a recurring “note to self” that sewing is my hobby, not my job!

With that in mind, here’s my toned-down list of goals for July-September.

Long Time Gone Sew-Along. After nearly 4 months, the sew-along is wrapping up and I’ll finish this quilt! I’m REALLY excited to see all my individual blocks come together and look forward to snuggling with it on the couch.

Baby quilt for my new nephew. Jose and I will have a new nephew sometime in October so of course he needs a quilt!

Finish Charlotte’s stocking. With the cross stitching done, it needs to be turned into an actual stocking. I’ve got the fabric already so it’s just a matter of making it happen.

Other than those 4 items, I’m going to let things evolve more naturally this summer. If I get some other projects done as well, that’s great but if I don’t get anything done beyond those things, so be it!

The last couple months of 2016 were full of fun projects. I took a class, went to Quilt Festival, tried a some new-to-me techniques and made a couplegifts. I ended the year on a high note, feeling very inspired and excited to once again MAKE ALL THE THINGS IN 2017!

This, of course, is not realistic.

And yet, as has happened many times before and will certainly happen again, I conveniently forget/overlook that fact when my brain is off and running with ideas.

And so it was with this in mind that I’ve set my crafty goals for 2017. I have a long list of ideas and plans to start the new year, and I intend to give that list my best shot. (I’ve even fooled myself into thinking it might actually be possible! It’s probably not, but hopefully people consider my enthusiasm endearing.) But before I get to the list, I decided to set 3 main goals:

That’s it. Three simple goals that I’ve typed up on a sheet of paper will tape to the wall of my sewing room. And with those three overarching things in mind, I’m going to set crafty goals on a quarterly basis instead of trying to plan the whole year at once, since a shorter time scale seems to work better for me in general.

Here’s what on my to-do list for January through March:

Interwined mini quilt. This one is already in work and I’ll have it finished by the end of this month.

Looptastic quilt for Charlotte. I mentioned this one yesterday and have started cutting fabric. This pattern is a bit time-consuming, so slow and steady progress is the name of the game.

Long Time Gone Sew-Along.Angie of Gnome Angel announced a sew-along for Jen Kingwell’s Long Time Gone pattern that will run from February to May. I’ve been wanting to try one of Kingwell’s patterns for a while — I love how intricate and scrappy they are! I’m a little intimidate but a lot excited about this one. By the end of March I should be about halfway done and I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts to share as we go.

Barn Quilt Block of the Month. I really want to keep improving my pattern-making skills this year and am creating my own “block of the month” challenge. I’ve mentioned a few times in recent months that I’ve developed a minor obsession with barn quilts (evidence here), so I plan to pick 12 of my favorites and turn them into actual quilt blocks. I’ll publish each one and at the end of the year I should have a nice sampler for myself — and anyone else who decides to follow along.

Tackle one UFO (unfinished object) per month. For January, I’ll be working to finish up Charlotte’s Christmas stocking. In February, I want to fix the USA pillow I made in 2015 — while technically finished, the floppy envelope closure is really annoying and I want to insert a zipper instead. In March, I want to make curtains for Charlotte’s room. I already have the fabric for them!

Secret Sewing project. For the first time ever, I have a secret sewing project in work. This is one part exciting — because it will be really cool when I’m able to say what it is (in the spring) — and one part frustrating — because keeping secrets is just annoying. I put this at the end of my list, but it’s actually the #1 priority since there is a real deadline involved.

Yep, that’s a LOT of stuff for three months and I may not finish it all, but as long as I stick to my big three goals I know good things will happen.

17 by 2017 progress. Done! I didn’t finish all 17, but I knew from the start that was unlikely, and having this list spurred me to make great progress. Last month I installed a new light in the breakfast room, ordered our breakfast room shades, cleared off the living room built-ins, unpacked all but two of the guest room closet boxes, hung art in all but the master bedroom, and finishing organizing my sewing room. All in all, I finished most or all of 11 items on my list. Nice!

Get ready for the half marathon. Fail. Hurting my foot in October threw me off and while I certainly could have gotten somewhat prepared in December, I just…didn’t. I ran, but had zero motivation to run long and never did anything more than 6.5 miles. So after some self-reflection and a lot of beating myself up mentally, I’ve decided not to run the race this year.

Happy holidays with minimal stress. This worked out really well! I had all my gifts done and either mailed or under the tree with a week to spare, and though I was sorely tempted to add a couple last-minute handmade gift items to my list, I resisted. With both Christmas Eve and Christmas itself falling on the weekend, the girls’ daycare was closed both Friday and Monday as well which made for a four-day holiday weekend. While that felt long at times — I readily admit that I was quite happy to send the girls back to daycare last Tuesday — it was also nice to have a solid chunk of quality family time. We walked around the neighborhood admiring the lights, went to the park three days in a row, baked cookies, spent a morning at the Galveston Children’s Museum, played with new toys…it was exhausting but also a lot of fun.

And here’s what I’m tackling in January…

Go to Orange Theory once a week. In light of my smart-but-frustrating decision to skip the half marathon, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my fitness routine and it’s time to shake things up. I’ve been to the new Orange Theory location near my house 3 times now and am really enjoying it! I signed up for 4 sessions per month — once a week will give me new challenges but also won’t be a burden on our family schedule. (I’ll still run a couple days per week as well, so OTF won’t be my only workout.)

Write Charlotte’s birth story. I wrote down really rough notes for this many months ago when it was fresh in my mind, but I want to clean it up and post it here for posterity like I did with Emma’s.

Finish Charlotte’s Christmas stocking. I want to do this now so it’ll be ready and waiting for when the holiday roll around again! I bought fabric for the rest of the stocking before the holiday prints left the shelves, so I need to finish the cross stitch and put it all together.

No phone between 5:30-7:30 on weekdays. In other words, no phone during the weekday “prime time” of getting home, making dinner, spending time with the girls, and getting them (or at least Charlotte) off to bed. Those two hours are so hectic and messing around on my phone is a huge distraction that’s become a bad habit. This goal is going to be HARD but I want to give it a solid effort.

March has always been one of my favorite months — spring arrives (in south Texas at least), the weather is nice, I celebrate my birthday! All good stuff.

Continue work on my Master’s Project. Obviously this one is still on my goal list. I’ve completed 9 posters. By the end of March, I really need to have at least 13 completed or else my timeline is really going to get crunched. Once the posters are finished, I have to write up my process, and I expect that to take at least two weeks. So I really need to be in a position to start doing that at the beginning of April while I wrap up the final 2 posters.

Take Emma to the rodeo. Last year was the first in a while that we didn’t make it to at least one night of the rodeo, but I plan to fix that this year! Technically, we probably won’t go to the rodeo itself since Emma’s not really cool with sitting still — but I want to take her to the carnival and livestock show for some people- and animal-watching…and maybe a ride on the ferris wheel.

Fix up the flower bed out front. Until recently, it was a total disaster area — weedy and overgrown plus several bushes that didn’t survive being transplanted last year when we hired someone to build up the bed and rearrange the existing plants. While Jose’s mom was still here to watch Emma, Jose and I spent an hour pulling up the largest weeds and removing a few of the nearly-dead bushes. Now I’m left with a half-filled bed that still has quite a few weeds to eradicate somehow. Barring something crazy, we’re basically safe from any below-freezing weather from here on out so my tentative plan is as follows:

Hoe the entire top layer of the bed to mix things up and (hopefully) uproot a lot of the smaller weeds.

Plant 4-5 new bushes to replace the ones we just removed.

Put a new layer of mulch down all over.

This will take several hours of work, including a trip to the garden center or maybe Maas Nursery, so I expect this will be a month-long project. Then I cross my fingers and hope for the best!

Replace light fixture in the bonus room. I want to start using the room more. We have a TV up there now, which will help (as sad as that is — a TV is the draw to use an entire room) but the other big issue is that the room is just way too dim at night. The boob light needs to be replaced with something bigger and brighter.

Make height measurement board. I bought the materials to make one of those height boards you see on Pinterest — the ones you hang on the wall and mark how tall your kids are every so often — back in January, but I haven’t made it yet. I’m not doing anything too fancy but it’ll be neat to hang on the wall somewhere when I’m done!

Hello!

I'm Sarah, a NASA engineer by day and quilter by night. I live in Houston with my husband and our two young daughters. I've had this ol' blog for more than 15 years, and these days it's home to my quilting work, snippets of family life, and occasional musings on my engineering career.